Spirax Sarco has helped
Northumbrian Water halve
the energy it uses to raise
steam at its Bran Sands
anaerobic digestion plant.

The work has been so
successful that the utility
company now plans to work
with Spirax Sarco and apply
the same approach in its new
plant at Howdon.

The energy-saving project
centred on solving an issue
with two boilers at Bran
Sands where a low-water
alarm would come into
operation, even though there
was plenty of water in the
system. Low-water alarms
made the boilers cut out.

Frank Errington, works
coordinator, says: “We’d lose
energy as the boilers were on
and off constantly and were
cooling down during the
downtime.”
Spirax Sarco engineers
found that existing level
probes and controllers were
not suitable for the task and
supplied two LP30 selfmonitoring
water level
probes for each boiler, along
with LC3050 level
controllers. Rewiring and a
new control panel completed
the alarm system.

Bran Sands was also
experiencing problems with
false alarms in its high-water
control systems, although
they didn’t cause the same
downtime and energy losses
as the low-level false alarms.

Spirax Sarco replaced the
high-water probes with its
own LP31 probes.

The utility company opted
for a Spirax Sarco service
agreement to keep the boilers
working properly in future.

Errington says: “Both
boilers are now available
most of the time and we’re
experiencing stable
operations. Energy savings
equate to about 50% of the
energy needed for raising
steam.”